by Nora Roberts
“I love you.” She murmured it as she raced her lips over his face. “I’m not afraid.”
She rose to him, opened to him, entreated. When he joined with her, she knew the power of being a woman, and the delights.
When she woke at dawn, alone, with the fire gone to ash, she knew the cold kiss of duty.
“YOU should not have let her go alone.”
Gwayne sat honing his sword while Rhiann scolded and made oatcakes. The morning sounds of the camp stirred around them. Horses, dogs, women cooking at pots, children chattering, and men readying to hunt.
“It was her wish.” He spoke more sharply than he intended. “Her command. You fret over her like a mother.”
“And what am I to her if not a mother? Two days, Gwayne, two nights.”
“If she can’t stay two nights alone in the forest, she can hardly rule Twylia.”
“She’s just a girl!” Rhiann slammed down her spoon. “It was too soon to tell her of this.”
“It was time. I gave my oath on it, and it was time! Do you think I have no worries? Is there anything I would not do to keep her from harm, even to giving my life?”
She blinked back hot tears and took his hand. “No. No. But she is like our own, as much as Cyra and young Rhys are. I want her here, sitting by the fire, putting too much honey on her oatcake, laughing. It will never be like that again.”
He set aside his sword to rise and take his wife in his arms. “She is not ours to keep.”
Over Rhiann’s head, he saw her come out of the forest, through the mists of the morning. She was tall—tall for a girl, he thought now. Straight as a soldier. She looked pale, but her eyes were clear. They met his, held.
“She is come,” Gwayne said.
Aurora heard the murmurs as she walked through camp. They had been told, she thought, and now they waited. Her family, her friends, stood beside their colorful wagons, or stepped out of them to watch her.
She stopped, waited until all was quiet. “There is much to be done.” She lifted her voice so that it echoed through camp, and beyond. “Eat, then come to me. I’ll tell you how we will defeat Lorcan and take back our world.”
Someone cheered. She saw it was young Rhys, barely twelve, and smiled back at him. Others took up the shouts, so that she walked through the celebration of them on her way to Gwayne.
Rhys dashed to her. “I’m not going to have to bow, am I?”
“You might, but not just now.” She ruffled his mop of golden hair.
“Good. When do we fight?”
Her stomach clutched. He was a boy, only a boy. How many boys would she send into battle? And into death? “Soon enough.”
She stepped to Gwayne, touched Rhiann’s arm to comfort her. “I’ve seen the way,” she said. “The way to begin. I’ll need my hawk.”
“I’m yours.” He bowed, deep. “Majesty.”
“Don’t give me the title until I’ve earned it.” She sat, took an oatcake, and drenched it with honey. Beside her, Rhiann buried her face in her apron and sobbed.
“Don’t weep.” Aurora rose again to gather Rhiann close. “This is a good day.” She looked at Gwayne. “A new day. It’s not only because of what’s in my blood that I can do this, but because of what you’ve taught me. Both of you. All of you. You’ve given me everything I need to meet my destiny. Rhys, will you ask Nara and Rohan to join us and break fast?”
She pressed a kiss to Rhiann’s cheek as Rhys ran off. “I’ve fasted for two days. I’m hungry,” she said, and with a wide grin she sat to devour her oatcakes.
3
HE had known her all his life, in his mind, in his heart. She came to him first as a child, laughing as she splashed in the silver river of a deep forest.
In those days they played together, as children do. And when he knew hunger and hurt, cold and a loneliness sharper than a blade, she would comfort him.
She called him her wolf. To him she was the light.
When they were no longer children, they walked together. He knew the sound of her voice, the scent of her hair, the taste of her lips.
She was his beloved, and though he thought her only a fantasy, he clung to her for his sanity. She was the single light in a world of darkness, the only joy in a world of despair.
With her he watched the dragon roar across the sky with the crown of prophecy in its claws. Through the magic light that followed, he saw the blood stain the ground at her feet, and he felt the smooth hilt of a sword in his hand.
But he dared not hope that he would be free, at long last, to lift that sword and serve her.
He dared not hope that she was real, and that someday she would belong to him.
“WILL you give me the gifts from my mother?” Aurora asked Nara.
“I’ve kept them for you. Rohan made this box, to keep them.” An old woman with a face scored by many seasons, Nara held out a box of polished applewood, scribed with the symbol of star and moon. It had been the royal seal of Twylia before Lorcan had ordered all such symbols outlawed.
“It’s beautiful. You honor my mother, Rohan.”
“She was a great lady.”
She opened the box and saw the clear globe, the clear star lying on dark velvet. Like the moon and star she’d seen in the night sky. “Conjured from love and grief, from joy and tears. Can there be stronger magic?”
When she lifted the globe, the light exploded in her hand. She saw through it, into the glass, into the world. Green fields sparkling in summer sunlight, wide rivers teeming with fish, thick forests where game grew fat. Cities with silver towers.
Men worked the fields, hunted the forests, fished the rivers, brought their wares to the city.
The mountains speared up, white at the peaks where the snow never melted. Beyond them, the Sea of Wonders fanned out. Other lands rose and spread. Other fields, other cities.
So they were not the world, she thought. But this was hers, to guard, to rule.
She took the star in her other hand and felt its heat, the flame of its power, fly into her.
“And the star shall burn with the blood of the dragon. Come as a lamb, mate with the wolf. Under truth is lies, under lies, truth. And valor holds its light under the coward’s guise. When the witching hour comes, when the blood of the true one spills on the moon, the snake shall be vanquished, torn by the fangs of the wolf.”
She swayed, lowered the crystals in her hands. “Who spoke?”
“You.” Gwayne’s voice was thin as he stared at her. Her hair had flown out as if on a wind, and her face had been full of light, her eyes full of power. Power that struck even a warrior with edges of fear and superstition.
“I am who I was. And more. It’s time to begin. To tell you, tell everyone.”
“I had visions,” Aurora said when everyone gathered around. “Waking and dreaming. Some were shown and some were told to me, and some I know because it is my blood. I must go to the City of Stars and take my place on the throne.”
“When do we march?” Rhys shouted, and was lightly cuffed by his father.
“We will march, and we’ll fight, and some of us will fall. But the world will not be freed by only the slice of a sword. It is not only might that will win what was taken from us.”
“Magic.” Rohan nodded. “And logic.”
“Magic, logic,” Aurora agreed. “Strategy and steel. And wiles,” she added with a sly smile. “A woman’s wiles. Cyra, what was most talked of in the village where we last stopped for supplies?”
Cyra, a blooming sixteen, still struggled not to stare at Aurora with awe. “Prince Owen, son of Lorcan. He seeks a bride among the ranking ladies across Twylia. Orders have gone out for any knights or lords still with holdings to send their eligible daughters to the city.”
“So Owen can pick and pluck,” Aurora said with disgust. “There will be feasting, and a grand ball, will there not, while ladies are paraded before the son of the snake like mares at auction?”
“So it’s said, my . . . my lady.”
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“My sister,” Aurora corrected, and made Cyra smile. “I will go as the lamb. Can you make me look the lady, Rhiann?”
“To ride into the city unarmed—”
“I won’t be unarmed.” Aurora looked at the crystals, and the sword she’d laid beside them. “Or alone. I’ll have an escort, as befits a lady of quality, and servants.” She tugged the hem of her hunting tunic. “And a wardrobe. And so . . . garbed, I will gain access to the castle. I need men.”
Excitement rose in her. What had been stretching inside her had found its shape. She bounded onto the table, lifted her voice. “I need men to ride out, to find the pockets of rebels, of soldiers whose swords grow dull and rusted, of their sons and daughters who would follow the True One. Find farmers willing to set aside their plows, and craftsmen willing to forge weapons for them. They must be trained, they must be forged, even as the weapons are forged, into an army. In secret, in haste.”
She looked into the forest, into the deep green of summer. “I swear to you, before the first frost bites the air we will take the city, we will take the world, and I will have the head of the snake in my hand.”
She looked down at Gwayne. “Will you raise my army?”
His soldier’s heart thrilled. “I will, my lady.”
“When it’s time to strike, I’ll send you a sign. You’ll know it. Rohan, I need your maps, and your logic.”
“You’ll have them.”
“Rhiann.” Aurora spread her arms. “I need a gown.”
SHE was groomed and tutored, gowned and schooled. Even as Rhiann and those she deemed could run a passable seam worked on silks and velvets, Aurora practiced with sword and arrow.
She gritted her teeth as lotions were rubbed into her skin, as Cyra practiced dressing her hair. And she planned her strategy over bowls of mead, read dispatches from Gwayne, and sent them.
It was the far edge of summer when she set out, garbed in a traveling cloak of dark blue, with Cyra and Rhiann as her handmaidens and Rohan, young Rhys, and three other men as her escorts.
She would play her part, Aurora promised herself. The gods knew she looked the pampered lady. She would charm and beguile, seduce if need be. And she would take the castle from the inside, while the army Gwayne was training came over the city walls.
It was a long journey, but she was grateful for the time. She used it to hone her vision, gather her courage, strengthen her purpose.
The fields were still green, she noted, whoever ruled. But she’d seen the fear, the distrust, and the anger in the eyes of men they passed on the road. She’d seen the crows picking at the bones of those who had been unlucky enough to be set upon by thieves, or Lorcan’s dogs.
Children, their faces pinched with hunger, begged for food or coin. She saw what was left of homes that had been burned to the ground, and the desperate eyes of women with no man left to protect them.
Had she not looked so closely before? Aurora wondered. Had she been so content to run through the forest, to sing in the hills, that she hadn’t seen the utter despair of her people, the waste of her land?
She would give her life to put it right again.
“It seems so strange to see Grandfather garbed so richly,” Cyra said.
“You must not call him Grandfather.”
“No, I’ll remember. Are you afraid, Aurora?”
“I am. But it’s a good fear. The kind that tells me something will happen.”
“You look beautiful.”
Aurora smiled, and struggled not to tug at the confining gown. “It’s only another weapon, and one I find I don’t mind wielding. A sprinkle of witchcraft and . . . he’ll look on me, won’t he, this son of a demon? He’ll look on me and want?”
“Any man would.”
Satisfied, Aurora nodded. While he looked, and wanted, she would seek another. She would seek her wolf.
He was there. Waiting. She felt him in her blood, and with every league they traveled, that blood warmed.
She would find her love, at last, in the City of Stars.
And her destiny.
“Oh, look!” Cyra bounced in her seat. “The city. See how the towers shine.”
Aurora saw it, in the distance, the silver and gilt that spread up into the sky. The grand towers of the castle gleamed, and on the topmost, the black flag with its coiled red snake flew.
She would burn it, she vowed. Burn it to ash and hoist her family crest in its place. The gold dragon on its white field would fly again.
“Twenty men on the castle walls,” Rohan said quietly as he rode his mount sedately toward her.
“Yes, I see them. And more at the city gates. He will have a personal guard as well, others at the castle gates. Some will slip away once Lorcan is dead, some will certainly join our cause. But others will fight. We’ll need to know the castle, every foot of it. Gwayne’s drawings are a start, but it’s likely Lorcan has changed some of it over the years.”
“On the sweat and blood of the people,” Rohan agreed. “Building fine rooms and thicker walls.” He had to remind himself not to spit. “However fine the gilt, he’s turned the City of Stars into the pit of a snake.”
“And I will bury him in it.”
She fixed a bored expression on her face, and watched everything, as they rode through the gates of the city.
IN the stables, Thane groomed the roan mare. He worked alone, and the work was endless. But he was used to that, to the aching muscles, the weary bones at the end of the day.
And he had come to prize his solitude.
He loved the horses. That was his secret. If Owen and Lorcan knew he enjoyed them, they would cast him out of the stables and the dim quiet that brought him some measure, at least, of peace. They would find him other drudgery, he thought. It pleased them to do so. He was used to that as well.
He’d learned as a very young boy to keep his words and his opinions to himself, to do his work, expect nothing—unless it was the heel of a boot in the ass. As long as he controlled his temper, his fury, his hatred, he had the gift of alone.
And those he loved were safe.
The mare blew softly as he ran a hand over her silky neck. For a moment, Thane laid his cheek to hers, shut his eyes. He was exhausted. Dreams plagued him, night after night, so that he woke hot and hard and needy. Voices and visions ran through his head and gave him no answers, and no relief.
Even his light, his love, brought a strange restlessness to him.
He could not war, could not find peace, so there seemed nothing for him but hours of work.
He stepped away from the mare, ran a hand through his unruly black hair. He would have gone to the next mount, but something stirred in his belly, a kind of hunger that had nothing to do with desire for food.
He felt his heart thudding in his chest as he walked past the stalls, toward the stable entrance, where the light fell like a curtain of gold.
He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the glare and saw